The sky was just beginning to lighten, and the morning mist had not yet dissipated.
Lin Yi carried a basket of freshly picked vegetables and walked unhurriedly through the familiar streets and alleys.
The air is filled with the rich aroma of soy milk and the smoky fragrance of fried dough sticks—the smell of the city awakening.
The breakfast stall owner, with her sharp eyes, spotted him from afar and smiled. She quickly covered a bowl of piping hot soy milk with a porcelain lid and then carefully wrapped two vegetarian buns in clean oil paper.
As Lin Yi reached out to take it, she suddenly lowered her body and whispered, "Brother, my mischievous son practiced the words 'the same as always' three times in front of the wall last night."
Lin Yi paused slightly as he took the breakfast, nodded, and felt a gentle touch on the most tender string in his heart.
It's done.
Everything is settled.
The inheritance no longer needs his deliberate guidance; it has evolved from the initial memory into the current habit; from an astonishing miracle into a calm and uneventful daily routine.
He didn't say much, but simply took a shiny coin out of his pocket and gently placed it under the bowl of soy milk.
This is the "silent thanks" his mother taught him. In that era when words were scarce, a simple gesture was worth more than a thousand words.
Now, this has become his only signature in this city.
On his way home, he took a detour, something that was unusual for him.
At the bend in the pebble path that he had "walked" out himself, he stopped and slowly squatted down.
There was no one around, only the rustling of the wind through the leaves.
He extended his index finger, his fingertip gathering a barely perceptible amount of strength, and forcefully drew a clear and deep mark on the smooth cobblestone pavement.
He wanted to test how this system, which already possessed self-awareness, would respond when "God" personally left a flaw.
Is it like before, to smooth everything over and restore everything to its original state overnight?
Or... could there be another answer?
The night was as dark as ink, and the attic window remained quietly open.
Lin Yi did not go on patrol as usual, but simply sat by the window, gazing into the darkness.
Nothing was said that night.
The answer was revealed the next morning.
The scratch he left himself was neither covered by mycelium nor repaired.
It stood there abruptly across the path, like an unhealable scar.
However, on both sides of the scratch, the mycelium gave rise to two brand-new Wallflower plants in an unprecedented way.
Their flower heads tilt slightly inward, like two loyal guards solemnly surrounding the shallow mark in the center, as if marking an indelible "human memory".
Lin Yi stood at a distance, gazing at the scene for a long time.
He understood.
The system is no longer just a program that mechanically corrects errors; it has evolved.
It began to understand, accept, and even begin to narrate.
It no longer rejects intervention, but rather incorporates intervention itself into the grand narrative.
Even a tiny scratch, as long as it was left by "him," can become part of this road, a new landmark.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Granny Chen, leaning on her cane, shakily arrived at a corner of the ruins park.
The wall-whispering flower, which was transformed from Lin Yi's old shoe, is blooming exceptionally brightly today.
Each petal was stretched to its fullest extent, and in the morning light, a line of text, as fine as a hair, composed of countless points of light, appeared on the inside of the petals: "Good morning, for today, and for the past."
Grandma Chen's cloudy old eyes lit up, and she leaned closer, reading out each word softly.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a crystal-clear drop of dew unexpectedly seeped from the very center of the wall-talking flower.
Dewdrops rolled down, landing precisely in her already outstretched, wrinkled palm.
She subconsciously looked down, and in that instant, she felt as if she had been struck by lightning.
The tiny dewdrop reflected not her face, nor the sky, but a dynamic scene—a little boy with pigtails, holding a young woman's hand tightly, walking step by step along the ridge of the field at dusk.
That boy was clearly Lin Yi in his childhood.
And that woman was his mother.
Grandma Chen's eyes instantly welled up with tears, but she smiled, a smile of utter relief.
“Good child, good child…” she murmured to herself, speaking to the flower as if to the whole world: “So what you remember is not just him, but the beginning of all stories.”
That night, Lin Yi returned to the attic and took out a piece of transparent wheat remnant that had long lost all its luster from a dusty wooden box.
It lay quietly in his palm like an ordinary piece of glass; the power that once stirred up storms had fallen silent.
He walked to the windowsill and buried it deep inside the flowerpot that had been with him for many years.
Just as he covered it with the last handful of soil, something unexpected happened.
The mycelium hidden in the potted soil seemed to smell the scent of an old friend, and took the initiative to coil around it from all directions, forming a dense net of light, gently and firmly lifting the remnant of the wheat ear, and slowly dragging it towards the core area where the potted plant's root system was most abundant.
The entire process was silent, yet carried a solemn and dignified sense of ceremony, like burying a distinguished friend.
That night, Lin Yi had a dream.
He dreamt that the ear of wheat in the dark soil quietly transformed into billions of glittering specks of light, which were absorbed by the roots of the ordinary weed in the flowerpot.
The leaves of the wild grass briefly shimmered with a long-lost, cool silver light, which then quickly faded, returning to their ordinary state.
He suddenly woke up from his dream; it was still dark.
He walked to the window and, by the moonlight, clearly saw that a ring of tender green buds had sprouted from the edge of the flowerpot.
At the heart of each new bud, a faint point of light flickers.
He stared intently at the light spots, and they turned out to be Chinese characters.
Taken together, it forms a sentence:
The path you take will take its own course.
The next day, Lin Yi did not go out.
He locked himself in the attic and did only one thing.
He unfolded a yellowed old piece of paper and, with a fountain pen that was almost out of ink, wrote the last line on it: "Today, I will not speak."
Then, he carefully folded the paper into a small paper boat and gently placed it in the flowerpot on the windowsill.
Without wind or light, the paper boat seemed to be held up by an invisible hand, slowly sinking into the soil and disappearing.
A miracle occurred that night.
In the still, windless night, the winding cobblestone path of the entire city spontaneously lit up.
The light is not static, but like a living stream, it flows slowly and steadily forward from its starting point.
Wherever the light stream passed, the path was crystal clear. Its shape, its curves, and every turn were exactly the same as the inspection route Lin Yi had taken day after day, year after year for the past decades!
However, the speed of this stream of light was slower and the rhythm was more steady than his usual pace, as if a tireless shadow was walking this final journey for him, turning his mission into an eternal landscape.
On the morning of the third day, Granny Chen once again walked along the pebbly path, leaning on her cane.
To her surprise, at the beginning of the path, the first wall-whispering flower was slowly unfolding its petals.
On its inner side, what emerges is no longer text, but two dynamic points of light—those points of light, like a pair of footprints, are moving forward step by step, steadily, along the direction of the light flow.
She stood there for a long time, her cloudy eyes reflecting those tireless "feet".
After a long while, she let out a long sigh, her voice filled with a mixture of pity and relief: "Old Lin, the road will walk on its own. You should take a rest too."
The moment the words fell, the two points of light vanished as if they had completed their mission, and the petals slowly closed, returning to silence.
Almost at the same moment, in that dilapidated attic in the east of the city, Lin Yi slung his faded old backpack over his shoulder, zipped it up, and took one last look at the place where he had lived for half his life.
Then, he turned around and closed the door quietly without making a sound.
There were no more notes tucked into the crack in the door.
But after he left, on the windowsill of the attic, a newly sprouted wild grass, bathed in the morning light, trembled gently with the breeze that squeezed in through the window cracks.
Unbeknownst to anyone, its roots had long since penetrated the base of the flowerpot, becoming completely connected with the ceaseless flow of light deep within the earth.
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